CVE-2022-50446 (GCVE-0-2022-50446)
Vulnerability from cvelistv5
Published
2025-10-01 11:45
Modified
2025-10-01 11:45
Severity ?
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ARC: mm: fix leakage of memory allocated for PTE Since commit d9820ff ("ARC: mm: switch pgtable_t back to struct page *") a memory leakage problem occurs. Memory allocated for page table entries not released during process termination. This issue can be reproduced by a small program that allocates a large amount of memory. After several runs, you'll see that the amount of free memory has reduced and will continue to reduce after each run. All ARC CPUs are effected by this issue. The issue was introduced since the kernel stable release v5.15-rc1. As described in commit d9820ff after switch pgtable_t back to struct page *, a pointer to "struct page" and appropriate functions are used to allocate and free a memory page for PTEs, but the pmd_pgtable macro hasn't changed and returns the direct virtual address from the PMD (PGD) entry. Than this address used as a parameter in the __pte_free() and as a result this function couldn't release memory page allocated for PTEs. Fix this issue by changing the pmd_pgtable macro and returning pointer to struct page.
References
Impacted products
Vendor Product Version
Linux Linux Version: d9820ff76f95fa26d33e412254a89cd65b23142d
Version: d9820ff76f95fa26d33e412254a89cd65b23142d
Version: d9820ff76f95fa26d33e412254a89cd65b23142d
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{
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          "defaultStatus": "unaffected",
          "product": "Linux",
          "programFiles": [
            "arch/arc/include/asm/pgtable-levels.h"
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      "descriptions": [
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          "lang": "en",
          "value": "In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:\n\nARC: mm: fix leakage of memory allocated for PTE\n\nSince commit d9820ff (\"ARC: mm: switch pgtable_t back to struct page *\")\na memory leakage problem occurs. Memory allocated for page table entries\nnot released during process termination. This issue can be reproduced by\na small program that allocates a large amount of memory. After several\nruns, you\u0027ll see that the amount of free memory has reduced and will\ncontinue to reduce after each run. All ARC CPUs are effected by this\nissue. The issue was introduced since the kernel stable release v5.15-rc1.\n\nAs described in commit d9820ff after switch pgtable_t back to struct\npage *, a pointer to \"struct page\" and appropriate functions are used to\nallocate and free a memory page for PTEs, but the pmd_pgtable macro hasn\u0027t\nchanged and returns the direct virtual address from the PMD (PGD) entry.\nThan this address used as a parameter in the __pte_free() and as a result\nthis function couldn\u0027t release memory page allocated for PTEs.\n\nFix this issue by changing the pmd_pgtable macro and returning pointer to\nstruct page."
        }
      ],
      "providerMetadata": {
        "dateUpdated": "2025-10-01T11:45:20.854Z",
        "orgId": "416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67",
        "shortName": "Linux"
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          "url": "https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4fd9df10cb7a9289fbd22d669f9f98164d95a1ce"
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      ],
      "title": "ARC: mm: fix leakage of memory allocated for PTE",
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    "assignerShortName": "Linux",
    "cveId": "CVE-2022-50446",
    "datePublished": "2025-10-01T11:45:20.854Z",
    "dateReserved": "2025-09-17T14:53:07.011Z",
    "dateUpdated": "2025-10-01T11:45:20.854Z",
    "state": "PUBLISHED"
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  "vulnerability-lookup:meta": {
    "nvd": "{\"cve\":{\"id\":\"CVE-2022-50446\",\"sourceIdentifier\":\"416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67\",\"published\":\"2025-10-01T12:15:37.037\",\"lastModified\":\"2025-10-02T19:12:17.160\",\"vulnStatus\":\"Awaiting Analysis\",\"cveTags\":[],\"descriptions\":[{\"lang\":\"en\",\"value\":\"In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:\\n\\nARC: mm: fix leakage of memory allocated for PTE\\n\\nSince commit d9820ff (\\\"ARC: mm: switch pgtable_t back to struct page *\\\")\\na memory leakage problem occurs. Memory allocated for page table entries\\nnot released during process termination. This issue can be reproduced by\\na small program that allocates a large amount of memory. After several\\nruns, you\u0027ll see that the amount of free memory has reduced and will\\ncontinue to reduce after each run. All ARC CPUs are effected by this\\nissue. The issue was introduced since the kernel stable release v5.15-rc1.\\n\\nAs described in commit d9820ff after switch pgtable_t back to struct\\npage *, a pointer to \\\"struct page\\\" and appropriate functions are used to\\nallocate and free a memory page for PTEs, but the pmd_pgtable macro hasn\u0027t\\nchanged and returns the direct virtual address from the PMD (PGD) entry.\\nThan this address used as a parameter in the __pte_free() and as a result\\nthis function couldn\u0027t release memory page allocated for PTEs.\\n\\nFix this issue by changing the pmd_pgtable macro and returning pointer to\\nstruct page.\"}],\"metrics\":{},\"references\":[{\"url\":\"https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/14009ada5712649589ab4ad0441b811780ea8773\",\"source\":\"416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67\"},{\"url\":\"https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4fd9df10cb7a9289fbd22d669f9f98164d95a1ce\",\"source\":\"416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67\"},{\"url\":\"https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d83a69966e8b6ae9dd447f3ac704c0223bceb7f7\",\"source\":\"416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67\"}]}}"
  }
}


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